Various objects, including mineral resources such as iron ore and limestone, are conveyed by a conveyor belt. When the objects are conveyed by the conveyor belt, the objects to be conveyed are fed onto an upper rubber cover of the conveyor belt from a hopper or another conveyor belt. The fed objects to be conveyed are carried on the upper rubber cover and conveyed in a traveling direction of the conveyor belt. When the objects to be conveyed are fed onto the upper rubber cover of the conveyor belt, the upper rubber cover is subject to impact, and when the surfaces of the objects to be conveyed are sharp, the upper rubber cover sometimes sustains cut damage. When the objects to be conveyed are loaded on the upper rubber cover and conveyed, the upper rubber cover is subject to wear as a result of the objects to be conveyed sliding on the upper rubber cover. Thus, in known art, various proposals have been made (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-88922A, for example) in order to improve wear resistance of the upper rubber cover.
The amount of wear, and the like occurring in the upper rubber cover significantly change depending on environment in which the conveyor belt is used (including the types of the objects to be conveyed). To estimate wear resistance of the upper cover rubber with high accuracy, evaluation is most preferably performed under conditions similar to the actual use environment. Accordingly, there is a demand for a testing device that performs evaluation to have condition settings that conform to the various environments in which the conveyor belt is used.
Examples of known testers that perform evaluation of wear resistance for rubber include a DIN (Deutschen Institut für Normung (German Institute for
Standardization)) wear tester and a Williams wear tester. However, these wear testers have the object of obtaining wear resistance under certain preset conditions. Thus, they cannot be set for conditions that conform to various environments in which the conveyor belt is used and are inadequate in estimating with high accuracy wear resistance of the upper cover rubber of the conveyor belt should the conveyor belt actually be used.